"Only fourteen, Keeonna had never had a boyfriend before, dreamed of attending Spelman to become an obstetrician, and thought she was 'grown.' Within a year she was pregnant and Jason was in prison, convicted of a carjacking and sentenced to twenty-two years. Overnight Keeonna had become a 'mainline mama,' a parent facing the task of raising a child--while still growing up herself--with an incarcerated partner. In this ... memoir, Keeonna recalls her challenging journey as a mainline mama, from learning to overcome the exhausting difficulties of navigating the carceral system in the United States to transforming herself into an advocate for women like her--the predominantly Black and Brown women left behind to pick up the pieces of their families and fractured lives"
Language
Place of publication
New York, NY
United States
Publishing group
HarperCollins Publishers Inc
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 230 mm
Width: 159 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
ISBN-13
978-0-06-320569-7 (9780063205697)
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Schweitzer Classification
Keeonna Harris is a writer, storyteller, mother of five, prison abolitionist, activist, and academic, born and raised in Watts and other parts of South Central Los Ange - les. Her work focuses on health disparities and radical organizing for women connected to systems of mass incarceration, mothering, and community building as acts of radical defiance against carceral institutions. Harris has received several honors, including a 2018–2019 PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship, a 2021 Tin House Summer Residency, a 2023 Baldwin For The Arts Residency, and a 2023 Hedgebrook Fellowship as the 2023 Edith Wharton Writer-in-Residence. She is a 2024 Hay - market Writing Freedom Fellow and a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Washington in the Department of Health Systems and Population Health. She is developing the Borderland Project, a mental health and community support system for women forced to navigate carceral institutions to maintain connections with incarcerated persons. She lives in Seattle.
